Monday, February 23, 2015

In today’s the-world-is-flat era, few things can differentiate you better than polished communication skills. Indeed, even at the world’s top PR agencies—among people who make their living off the written word—those who can write well are shockingly few (and increasingly well compensated).

Happily, the mechanics of good writing are eminently learnable. For most of us, the problem is readily diagnosable: our last English class was in college, and from our corporate perch today, we look down on continuing education—“Do I really need a two-hour seminar on something I do every day?”

Yes! We all do. (If you disagree, ask your boss.) In fact, the time you spend writing (emails, memos, reports, proposals, website copy, blog posts, social media content, e-newsletters, and so on and so forth) is a reason for training.

In that spirit, I hope you’ll page through the above presentation. A refresher on the myths and rules of good business writing, it contains cameos from House,Good Will Hunting,Saturday Night Live, Shakespeare, Churchill, Einstein, da Vinci, Orwell, and of course Strunk and White. Even the IRS makes an appearance.

Enjoy—and happy writing!

Jonathan Rick is the president of the Jonathan Rick Group, a communications consultancy in Washington, DC. For more linguistic learnings, pursue his blog, Sprachgefuhl.